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Why can’t we sell the U.S. on visiting Canada: Olive

Evidently, the Canadian Trade Commission hasn’t noticed that the U.S. recovery, while anaemic, is stronger than most, and concludes that the current punishing conditions are permanent.

Tourism may be down, but this Grey Line Double deck bus was quite full. A young lady, with her family from Ireland, reaches up to touch a tree while riding along Davenport Rd. heading toward Casa Loma.
Toronto Star (Peter Power / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

What are we to make of the recently announced abdication by the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) of its job to lure U.S. visitors to the Great White North?

Some context: The CTC and its predecessors have been chronically ineffectual in attracting international tourists from anywhere. Ottawa has never matched Cornelius Van Horne, who oversaw the construction of the CPR, in his success in drawing Europeans, in particular, to the Banff Springs Hotel, Royal York and other “castles of the north” he strung along his rail route.

If the CTC is prepared to give up on the world’s richest market, right next door, it’s worth asking if there’s any point to a CTC that can’t sell the world’s most nearly-perfect country to the Yanks, can’t sell Americans on a stable, familiar country whose largest cities routinely rank among The Economist’s 10 most liveable (Pittsburgh, ranking 16th, is the most liveable U.S. burgh).

A reality check:

The CTC’s official reason for giving up on U.S. tourism is that Yanks spend so little in Canada, just $518 per Canadian trip. Actually, the CTC’s absurd proposed neglect of the world’s third-most-populous country traces to Stephen Harper’s government having cut the CTC’s budget by almost one-fifth this year. That the CTC has elected to shut down its U.S. marketing efforts in ardent pursuit of the relative handful of big-spending Brazilians, Aussies and Chinese who come to Canada would show its political masters that it’s getting a bigger bang for the bucks it spends on marketing in those countries, even if there’s more tourism money to be mined in the U.S. Midwest than the rest of the world combined. If you’re skilled at tourism marketing, that is.

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Where exactly does the CTC think it’s going to find teeming masses of non-U.S. international tourists for the Cape Breton Trail and Stanley Park? In a recession-wracked Europe, the world’s largest economy? In a Pacific Rim and South Asia whose hyper-growth of the 2000s is slowing? Evidently, the CTC hasn’t noticed that the U.S. recovery, while anaemic, is far stronger than most major economies, and concludes that the punishing conditions for potential U.S. visitors over the past few years are a permanent condition.

Those skinflinted U.S. tourists drop only $518 in Canada per trip, on average, says the CTC. Which is rather a lot, actually, considering that most American travelers are short-term visitors to the Shaw and Stratford festivals. Add to that the Rogers Centre to see their hometown Yanks and Red Sox. They spend a month at cottages that they, like Mitt Romney’s family, have long owned along the Bluewater Highway, or on Salt Spring Island, or in Chester, N.S. They indulge in long romantic weekends in Europe — oops, historic Quebec City, the only remaining walled city in the Western Hemisphere. Fortunately, these hospitable tourist spots sell themselves, in the glowing reviews of them appearing for decades in the travel pages of the New York Times, not to dismiss an exceptionally aggressive Tourisme Québec, which knows its U.S. market cold.

“Dollar for dollar, advertising in overseas (non-U.S.) markets has proven to generate a higher return on investment than the United States,” Paul Nursey, CTC vice-president of strategy and corporate communications, told the Star. The CTC henceforth will be in ardent pursuit of visitors from Brazil, who spend an average of $1,874 per Canadian trip, Australia ($1,781) and China ($1,781). So my one big question: What makes the CTC imagine it will be any more successful in luring more Portuguese-speaking visitors from São Paulo, who might schlep to the other end of the Western Hemisphere perhaps once a decade, when it can’t convince English speakers in Chicago and Manchester, N.H., to routinely visit a GTA that’s home to the world’s biggest film festival, gay pride celebration and Caribana extravaganza, and the Ikea monkey?

As long as Canada’s 13 U.S. consulates and our Washington embassy are evidently of no help in recruiting American visitors, let’s save some dough by consolidating them. Or could it be that the CTC does not adequately co-ordinate with our plethora of U.S. diplomatic and trade posts in Seattle, Denver, Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and so on? Just as they don’t appear to adequately co-ordinate with local and regional attractions across Canada? Next month’s Bell Lightbox LGBT film festival would seem worthy of at least a half-page ad in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter — but that would require targeted, strategic thinking.

If the Yanks are skinflints at $518 per visit, what does that say about us? Canadians spend less than $300 on travel within our country. It might be best, before the CTC attempts to figure out the Rio and Melbourne markets, to strap on some training wheels and figure out how to boost tourism expenditures by Canadians in Canada.

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